04.02.26b. John Kerry's Divorce and Annulment. One of the great hypocrisies of the Roman Catholic church is its pretence that it does not allow divorce. Instead, says the Church, it only allows "annulment", on the grounds that the people being married did not understand what marriage was all about. The logical consequence, one might think, would be that the marriage was not truly a marriage, and the children bastards. But apparently the Church does allow that the children are legitimate (I suppose by analogy to the children of marriages between non- Catholics). Thus, all the Church claims is that the marriage was not a sacrament. Since Protestants deny that marriage is ever a sacrament-- that is, that it is a fundamentally religious rather than secular ceremony, and one at which God is present or signified in a special way--- what it boils down to is that the Roman Catholic Church agrees that even the typical Roman Catholic marriage is not a sacrament. The marriages that are annulled would, on the wedding day, look exactly like any other Roman Catholic marriage, so we can assume that even those which the Church does not investigate woudl be annulled on request.

Here is a story talking about the particular case of John Kerry.

US Sen. John Kerry joins US Rep. Joseph Kennedy in seeking the annulment with both cases bearing striking similarities. Both men's ex-wives are not Catholic and both women have opposed the annulments, calling the process hypocritical.
Julia Thorne said on Wednesday she does not recognize the validity of the annulment process. She said that while she supports her ex-husband politically and wishes him well, she said the annulment process "was disrespectful to me ... and devoid of any sense of the humanity of what this means to me and the children."
News reports and assertions by Thorne, as well as Kennedy's ex-wife, Sheila Rauch Kennedy, have misrepresented the Church's teaching on annulments. Thorne said she wrote to Church officials that she considered its "ecclesiastical investigation as hypocritical, anti-family, and dishonest," as well hurtful to her children. Thorne and Kerry, who wed in 1970 and divorced in 1988, have two daughters.
The Church teaches that annulments do not invalidate the legitimacy of children and only recognizes that the couple was incapable of validly performing the sacrament of marriage.

On a separate issue: Kerry's first wife was extremely wealthy. Did he benefit financially from the marriage? I ran across one article which implied that he did not---that his net worth at the time of marrying Teresa Heinz was only $150,000. That seems ridiculously low, though, for a middle-aged preppie Yale Skull and Bones U.S. Senator, even ignoring any money he might have gotten from his wife.

[in full at 04.02.26b.htm . Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

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